Content remains the king and written words have become more powerful than ever before. Content marketing has never been as much important as it is today, thanks to the wide accessibility of the Internet via various devices and the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. However, content marketing & editing go hand in hand. Anyone who wishes to excel in the content marketing strategy will have to be ruthless while editing!
Content marketing strategies change over time. You will come across numerous content marketing strategies for 2018. What remains constant is the need to create engaging and interesting content. There is no alternate way to attaining this goal other than having ninja editing skills!
How to develop better content marketing & editing skills?
A critical and integral part of content marketing is content editing. Letting the words flow and weave feelings is easy. What’s really needed is to become a ruthless self-editor, and that’s the difficult part.
Grammar is crucial
In-depth knowledge of grammar is extremely important if you are to improve your content marketing & editing skills. Irrespective of what language you are following, abide by the grammatical rules. There is no scope of slack when it comes to ensuring proper grammar. Your artistic ability cannot excuse your poor grammatical skills. Punctuations are critical too and among the most neglected aspects while writing. Be the ‘Grammar Nazi’. Ensure perfection.
Cut out the fluff
As a writer, most of us tend to hold special attachment with every word. While some are important, there are those that are not. As we let the artist within us free we also make our writings unnecessarily long at times. As a self-editor, you will need to be as ruthless as a killer. You will have to cut out those unnecessary parts of the writing. Word count does not matter. You can always make your writing more compact and short. Reduce the fluff. Do not make it redundant.
Learn to balance
Most people find it quite difficult to be a wonderful writer as well as a ruthless editor. One of the major reasons is the clash between the two personalities. Being a writer means setting the inner artist free and do not be bound by restrictions. Letting words flow as the emotions are weaved into sentences and magic is created through words. As a ruthless editor, the role is to be merciless with the creation. Ensure that perfection is met and redundancy has no place in the final draft. The trick is to strike a balance. As a content marketing & editing expert, you will have to let the words flow freely. Form the loose structure with superfluous words and do not care about redundancy. Once you have penned down your thoughts, feelings, and emotions, it is time to be the strict editor that will make the entire content crisp and smart. Keep in mind who your target audience is going to be and ensure that the final piece manages to strike a chord.